# 2

# life.

When the phone rings at a certain time in the morning, before you have left for work, and the person calling is an administrator at the school you work at - it is usually not good. I’m pretty sure I had dreaded this particular phone call ever since I became a school social worker. And I’m not sure if it was for the right reasons.

Maybe at first it was just that I felt ill-equipped to handle something with the magnitude that crisis brings. I know at some point my concern became one of fear - fear that I was going to be responsible for the crisis…the student death by suicide, or a violent act that could have been prevented had I done my job right.

The phone call I dreaded was received early in the school year - the last school year I worked full time in a high school. A ninth grade student had completed suicide. Sadly, the first reaction I had was relief - relief that it wasn’t a student I had been working with. I suppose the first reaction was fear - ‘oh shit’. And then came the relief. Not because it would be ‘sad’ because I had a relationship with the student, nope. It was because I would feel responsible for the student’s death.

I like to think the truth is that I experienced a range of feelings. I know, after receiving the call and processing that initial reaction of fear, my thoughts went straight to the family experience. What was it like to find her, to tell her siblings, and all the ‘next steps’ I could conceive of. This ‘empathy’ experience hits hard and lasts long - the feeling experience of this ‘compassion’ thing that most of us in the mental health field have in abundance - the sensory experience that feels as if it is happening to you…feeling all the feelings.

I would be lying if I shared anything other than my initial reaction - oh shit, am I responsible? ‘Am I going to get in trouble?’ It’s silly, right? And so very rooted in a thinking pattern that can begin so young - am I going to get in trouble? Did I do something wrong?

It’s curious why that is. Why is it that in a school environment the first reaction is so closely linked to the whole CYA (cover-your-ass) mindset. Fear. I knew that this was the disconnect. I’m not sure if I started teasing this out prior to the student death or after. It really doesn’t matter. I knew the processes put in place were helpful. Yet, there is still the something else - the something more. Something was off. If we could ‘chip away’ at the offness when it comes to addressing these issues, maybe we could get closer to unmasking the pathway to healthy and sustainable outcomes.

I got two phone calls during this particular school year. The next one came at the end of the year and the student was on life support. I got off the phone and I remember pacing my kitchen floor.

I wanted different outcomes. I wanted to figure out how to get different results. Something was off and the focus of intervention needed to match that - whatever ‘that’ was. The human piece.

All of a sudden I projected audibly in the kitchen with arms in the air - life! This is the answer. If death is the focus of the ‘problem’ then life is the solution. We ‘sell’ life! That’s the solution. This epiphany at some point lead me back to me. Was I alive? If I was going to begin to sell this idea of life to teenagers…what was I going to sell? Was I living a life of vitality and active, healthy engagement in balanced pursuits that were as enjoyable as they were meaningful and uplifting? Oh HELL no…I was not alive.

At some point, during all this, I realized that if I could figure out how to ‘live’ and what the ‘skills’ were to return this ‘life’ back to me, THEN I would understand what these magical skills were that lead to the healthy and sustainable GROWTH outcomes that made sense - the something more. The human piece.